You're really in trouble now. You've been defeated, captured or otherwise humiliated by your enemies, and are now at their mercy. But you've got one last ace up your sleeve. The only problem is, this final attack is going to spell death for you as well as your enemies. But hey, you're going to die anyway! Might as welltry to take some of them down with you.

When this trope is invoked, the hero usually survives, and the villain nearly always dies, regardless of who is trying to take whom with them. If it's the villain trying to take the hero, the attempt inevitably fails. If it's the hero trying to take the villain, the attempt inevitably succeeds, and it's likely (but not certain) that the hero will find a way to come out of it alive. (Exception: If the hero is a redeemed bad guy, the attempt inevitably succeeds and kills both of them.)

Examples

Doomtown has a card called Take Ya With Me. Which was part of a cheesy strategy dubbed "lose to win" (use it with a mook to give your opponent a Pyrrhic Victory, maybe healing the mook afterward to add insult to injury) until it received errata that you can only target someone who's more of a mook than one of your dudes getting killed.

Nuclear War has the "Retaliatory Strike" rule where a player who has lost the last of his population may immediately launch all of his missles and warheads at whomever he likes. If one of his targets is eliminated in the process, then that nation may make a retaliatory strike of his own. It's possible to launch the unique 100 Megaton warhead in the hopes of getting a lucky roll and destroying the world in the process.

There are also creatures that can kill themselves to take out other creatures, or which hurl damage or direct creature killing around when they die.

Poo: the card game (a game based around monkeys throwing you-can-guess-what at each other) contains two copies of a card called Blaze of Glory, which allows a player, when eliminated, to fling all the poop he currently has at whoever he chooses. This tends to be hoarded along with all the really good poop, and has been known to produce a game which nobody wins thanks to chain reactions.

There are several cards that invoke this in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. An obvious one is Self Destruct Button, which kills both players if there is a 7000 Life Point difference between players. A couple more would be Ring of Destruction (a card which dealt damage to both players equal to the targeted monster's attack, now amended specifically to prevent this) and Morphing Jar (if a player flips it when both players have less than five cards in their deck.) On a smaller scale, there are some Monster Cards that can either destroy the card that destroyed them or a completely different card depending on their effect; the best example is Man Eater Bug, best-played face-down to trick someone to attack with their own monster and then use the otherwise pathetic Man Eater Bug to destroy their biggest monster and there’s (usually) nothing that the opponent can do about it.

We Didn't Playtest This At All features one card that reads that everyone loses by the end of the turn.

In the Suicide Run storyline, the Punisher has just finished killing all the heads of the big Mafia families from around the world (again). He is helped by the fact he's carrying a dead man's trigger in his left hand, connected to a huge bomb in the otherwise empty building. But wait... there's one guy left. A jerk-ass nobody who runs some gangs out of New York. The punk points out it's just him and the Punisher and maybe both could walk away. Nope. No deal. BOOM.

In the MAX series arc "Six Hours to Kill", Punisher is poisoned and told to kill someone to get the antidote. Instead, he kills the person who poisoned him and pulls out his list of scumbags, going through the methodically before the poison kills him. He actually runs out of targets before he runs out of time.

The end of Crisis on Infinite Earths has the Anti-Monitor coming after Superman of Earth-2 one last time, with the words "Superman... I will not die... unless you die with me!"

Red Daughter of Krypton: After her plan to destroy Worldkiller-1 -a body-snatching, genocidal alien abomination- fails, Supergirl decides that the only way to kill it is killing herself while it is trying to steal her body, so she removes her Red Ring, which usually results in instant death of the bearer.

Demon Spawn: Once her plan fails, villain Nightflame's world starts dying. And she is dying together with it. So Nightflame attempts to destroy Supergirl to kill them both.

Nightflame: I have failed to gain your powers, my world is at an end! There, I do not wish to live! By destroying you... I destroy myself!

In the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog series — technically, the side-sides starring Knuckles the Echidna — Tobor (a former Guardian who was unknowingly replaced by a member of the Dark Legion thanks to an accident during battle) emerged from the Legion's former prison with Kragog back into the real world and proceeded to slam themselves into an energy cannon being used by the Legion. This turns into a Stupid Sacrifice when you realize that the energy cannon was being used to rescue the trapped citizens of Echindaopolis on Knuckles' orders.

The Joker is often so Axe-Crazy that he's willing to include himself among his victims if that will get his point across. In the Spider-Man/Batman crossover, for example, he couldn't bear the thought of Carnage killing Batman, and threatened to spring a lethal virus that would have likely killed everyone in the city - himself included - unless Carnage backed off. (And neither Batman nor Spider-Man thought for a second that he was bluffing.)

In Blackest Night, this is how Kyle Rayner takes out the Black Lanterns assaulting the Green Lantern Central Power Battery— he traps them in a forcefield with him and an Alpha Lantern Battery on the verge of Going Critical.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-the original Eastman and Laird series is far more brutal than the cartoons or movies made in its name. In its climactic Turtles vs Foot Clan scene, the Foot Clan is slashed to pieces (with blood and severed limbs all about) and Shredder beaten to a gasping pulp. Leonardo offers him a dagger with which to perform seppuku, so he could go out like the samurai he dresses like. Instead, Shredder pulls out a grenade and attempts to perform this trope.

The actual story of Final Crisis is Darkseid attempting to do this to all of reality.

In X-Men, at the end of the Inferno arc, Madelyne Pryor tries to trap Jean Grey in her dying mind and thus take her with her, recreating the incident that awakened Jean's powers in the first place (Jean nearly died inside the mind of her friend Annie, who was run over — Madelyne was given this memory by Sinister). Madelyne would succeed if it weren't for the Phoenix Force offering Jean the opportunity to live if she absorbs both Phoenix and Madelyne's personalities.

Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp's Black Summer has Tom Noir use his old girlfriend's gun to blow up a cemetery, taking both John Horus and Frank Blacksmith with him, thus taking out the main people behind the whole situation.

From Infinite Crisis, Brother Eye, after being attacked and its stabilizing unit sent hurling down to earth, activated its defense systems on the satellite to bring down its creator Batman with it as well.

In the Spider-Man storyline, Ends of the Earth, the Rhino, unable to live on after the new Rhino murdered his wife, ends up pinning Silver Sable to the floor of a flooding floor, the two seemingly drowning as Spidey makes the tough decision to face down Doctor Octopus. (He may not have been successful, however. The seer Madame Webb later told Spider-Man that Sable survived. She may have been lying — she has deceived Spider-Man to manipulate him before — but if it was the truth and Sable did escape, then it is possible that the Rhino did too.)

Speaking of Doc Ock, this was his plan all along — he plotted to flash fry the Earth with the exception of a VERY small fraction of the human race left alive to rebuild and remember him as the greatest monster to have ever lived. However, Spidey throws a wrench in that when he reveals that, even if those people lived, they'd be brain dead. Ock doesn't take that well.

Another storyline, Morlun's introduction, had Spidey inject himself with radioactive material so that if he died from Morlun's feeding, Morlun would suffer a lethal dose of radiation.

In Convergence #3, Earth 2 Thomas Wayne blowing himself up for killing several pre-Flashpoint Gotham's villains.

Happens twice in Convergence: Suicide Squad #2. First Star Sapphire to Cyborg Superman to avenge the destruction of Coast City. At the end Amanda Waller blows herself up to destroy New Oa with Alan Scott and take out Captain Boomerang, who'd turned traitor.

In the original Men in Black comics, Agent Jay was set to be disintegrated by the Arbiter Doran. At the last second, Jay pulled Jerkass Agent Kay in with him. They both die, and are subsequently reformed as clones. Kay is led to believe he was talked into willingly dying alongside Jay, and wipes his partner's memory of the event.

Shakara: After Shakara sabotages the Apocalypse core on the Succubi starship, sending them crashing down onto the planet they were in the process of harvesting, their commander orders the creature responsible found. He knows that they're already doomed because the planet is about to explode anyway, he just wants the consolation of killing him first.

Button Man: After Harry fatally wounds another Button Man, he tries to kill them both with a grenade, but Harry jumps out of the way in time.

In the Teen Titans storyline The Judas Contract, when Terra believes she's been betrayed by Deathstroke, she flips out and begins trying to kill everyone - Deathstroke, the Titans, even H.I.V.E. - in her rage and taking them with her. All she ends up doing is killing herself.

A Crown of Stars: In chapter 57 a character explains Shinji and Asuka that the first time troops of the Avalon army were cut off a whole regiment performed a kamikaze raid and sacrificed themselves to destroy to the enemy and save the people they were protecting.

Advice and Trust: Invoked. In chapter 7 Zeruel is ignoring, destroying and obliterating all Nerv's defenses and the Evas seem useless against him. It has already invaded the Geofront and Misato is running out of options. She remembers there were self-destruct charges placed throughout the Geofront for the ultimate contingency and she orders they are armed and she gets ready to call in a nuke strike on the city in case they can not stop Zeruel and need blowing themselves up to destroy it.

Calvin and Hobbes: The Series: With both of them fighting over a lake of molten lava in an alternate dimension, Calvin and Holographic Retro manage to do this to each other as they both go over the edge, ending the season on a cliffhanger.

The Child of Love: In chapter 3 after being defeated by the three Evas, an Angel explodes trying to destroy them before dying. It does not work.

Equestria: A History Revealed: Luna's entire reasoning behind the Battle of the Everfree Fields. After learning that her war was practically lost, she gathered all her remaining forces for one last stand; to wipe out as many Celestia's forces as she could. The only main difference between this and most of the other examples on this page was that Luna chose to sit this battle out, waiting for Celestia to confront her herself.

Evangelion 303: In chapter 15 Asuka resorted to this tactic to win her and Mari's "friendly" duel. Asuka's plane was about to fall down and she decided she only needed to survive long enough to shoot Mari's down, so she performed a suicidal attack to take Mari with her.

In A Growing Affection, the last fight between Gai and Kisame has this. After Kisame breaks out his Tailed Beast cloak, Gai opens the Eighth gate to counter, allowing him to kill Kisame at the cost of his own life.

Mare of Steel: During the final fight between Supermare and General Zod, Zod ultimately realizes that he can't beat her, so he decides to overload his magic and blow both of them — and Canterlot — to kingdom come. She responds by flying him into space and letting him detonate harmlessly although she gets caught in the blast and badly injured.

The Princess of Themyscira: During the Final Battle, Diana destroys the Alicorn Amulet, thus closing the portal that Ares was using to unleash the demons of Tartarus on Equestria. When Ares' desperate attempts to keep it open result in him starting to be dragged into it himself, he grabs Diana and tries to drag her in with him, only to be stopped by Soarin's timely intervention.

Last Child of Krypton: Sachiel blew itself up to try to destroy Shinji and Unit 01. It did not work. Shinji lifted it off the ground and it detonated high above the city, harming nobody, not even Shinji, since he endured the explosion.

The Eldar do this at the end of their Last Stand against the Reapers in the crossover The Mission Stays The Same; they pour their psychic energy into their homeworld's star, causing it to go nova and vaporize most of the invading fleet, along with all remaining traces of the Eldar race.

In the Tamers Forever Series Gallantmon Crimson Mode uses up his remaining life to unleash a massive explosion that wipes out Daemon.

In Mega Man Recut, Ice Man tries this to both Wily and Mega Man, though he fails. It gets him killed.

At the climax of Friends to the End, Simba and Hago end up dangling off of Pride Rock, hanging over the burning inferno below, with Hago trying to drag Simba down with him. He nearly succeeds, but the pain from the heat below causes him to let go and fall in.

In The End, Simba ends his Final Battle with The Writer by grabbing him and jumping off of Pride Rock, mortally wounding them both. Fortunately, the Writer dies first, and his death reboots the universe, restoring Simba along with his friends.

The Mayor plans on this in Xendra after the Scoobies successfully destroy the Box of Gavrok and prevent him from getting another one in time. As a result, he knows he won't survive his transformation into an Old One and instead intends to kill them with the resulting explosion.

Just as in canon, Rei attempts to do this when the 16th Angel is fusing with her... only for Armisael to reveal that he had discovered her intent in Asuka's mind when he briefly tried to unify with her as well and has reacted accordingly by disabling Unit-00's self-destruct mechanism. As a last resort, Rei uses a watered-down version of the forbidden union of Adam and Lilith to merge with her EVA, triggering a mini-Impact which causes as much damage to Tokyo-3 as the original self-destruction.

EVA-02's self-destruction against the MP-EVAs. However it is not Asuka who sacrifices herself. It's Kyoko who, after bidding her daughter goodbye, ejects her before blowing herself up.

madsthenerdygirl's MCU Rewrites: In Avengers: Civil War, Zemo plans on blowing both himself and the Avengers up with pressure-sensitive explosives so that the Avengers will be killed and two of their own members: Wanda Maximoff and Bucky Barnes (whom Zemo had framed for an attack on the United Nations Complex) will be held responsible, thus ruining the Avengers' legacy. Fortunately, everyone escapes and Wanda manages to contain the explosion and T'Challa takes Zemo into custody for his crimes (one of which was killing his father in the UN Complex explosion).

Film — Animated

At the end of Aladdin, just before Jafar gets sucked into a lamp after being tricked into becoming a genie, he grabs Iago the parrot by the tail feathers and pulls him into said lamp along with him.

Iago was actually his ally. Really more a case of "misery loves company".

Joker: I'm your only chance to get out of here! Let me go or we'll both die! Batman: Whatever it takes!

Original production materials for Beauty and the Beast indicated that Gaston killing the Beast before falling off the castle was actually closer to this trope than the final version's Backstab Backfire.

In The Book of Life, Chakal tries to use his bombs in order to destroy the entire town. Manolo however ends up trapping the both of them inside a bell, containing the explosion to just the two of them. However, Joaquin secretly gave Manolo the Medal of Everlasting Life, which let him survive unscathed.

Sitka's method of dispatching the bear that was attacking Kenai (after Kenai went after said bear alone for reasons explained earlier) in Brother Bear; they're on top of a glacier, and Sitka drives his spear into the ice, causing a huge block of the glacier to break off and fall into the river below, taking the bear with him. Sitka dies but the bear survives, motivating Kenai to once again track the bear down and slay it in an act of revenge, which in turn invokes the wrath of the Great Spirits and kicks off the rest of the plot.

At the end of Dinosaur, as the Carnotaurus is about to fall into the ravine, he immediately bites onto Aladar's leg, but the Iguanodon manages to shake him off before climbing back up.

Having been somehow formed almost exclusively by Jenova, they were actively dissolving in the purifying rain—explosion unrelated. Still, the were avenging Sephiroth, Jenova, and Kadaj by killing Cloud even as they went down, so it still counts. Only Cloud had a Get Out of Death Free card for world-saving, apparently.

In the climax of The Great Mouse Detective Basil manages to defeat Ratigan by activating the chimes on the Big Ben clock tower, the resulting shockwave sends Ratigan falling from the tower he grabs a hold of Basil and takes him with him, Basil manages to survive by grabbing a part of the blimp he was hanging onto and using it like a propeller.

In the comic the film is based on, the action was done by John Cloud instead. While it was insanely awesome, the subplot had little to do with the plot, so it was cut, and the moment was integrated into Faraday's Heroic Sacrifice.

In Kung Fu Panda 3, when Po discovers that the Wuxi Finger Hold won't work on the immortal Kai, Po grabs Kai in a bear hug and uses the hold on himself, taking them both into the Spirit Realm.

In The Land Before Time, Sharptooth grabs Petrie as they plummet into the pond below, though the flyer survives.

The Rugrats Movie has Spike dangling from the end of a bridge while fighting a Savage Wolf. Once the wolf is distracted by Angelica blowing a raspberry at it, Spike grabs the wolf's tail and hurls himself and the wolf off of the bridge. Spike lives, the wolf doesn't.

Heavily implied in Sleeping Beauty; after Prince Philip has thrown his sword at Maleficent, piercing her heart, she makes one final lunge at him before falling to her death.

Storks: Hunter tries to pull this as he is falling by using the giant robot claw to grab the ledge that Junior, Tulip, and the baby are standing on, but Junior flies himself and the girls back to safety.

In Tangled, after being lethally stabbed by Gothel, Eugene decides to cut Rapunzel's hair, the only thing keeping Gothel young, rather than allow Rapunzel to use her hair to heal him.

In Thumbelina, Grundel grabs Cornelius as they tumble into the tunnel bridge abyss below.

Similar in spirit, but lacking an actual enemy, in Voltaire's "The Ship's Going Down". The ship is utterly destroyed, and the captain takes a small bit of solace in the fact that his crew is going down with him and he's not dying alone. Then he spots the guy no one likes trying to make a getaway on a raft; not having that, he lances a fish-gig into Seaman Shaft's eye.

The Dixie Chicks song If I Fall You're Going down with me is an inversion of this trope since the song is actually about falling in love as opposed to dying.

We're hanging right on the edge now baby The wind is getting stronger We're hanging on by a thread now honey We can't hold on much longer It's a long way down but it's too late

If I fall you're going down with me You're going down with me baby if I fall You can't take back every little chill you give me You're going down with me baby heart and all ooh yeah

Five Finger Death Punch's If I Fall. Especially the ending.

If I fall,Fuck You All.I'm taking everybody out.If I fall I will take everybody down.If I fall I will.

In the full video for The Decemberists' "O Valencia!", Colin Meloy's character meets at a diner with the man who betrayed him and poisons his drink. The man stabs him in the neck just before he dies.

Mythology and Religion

The Russian bylina tales tell of Chuds, when cornered, digging up dungeons, going there with their valuables, women and children, taking their last stand there and then collapsing them, killing themselves along with their enemies. Several such sites have actually been found.

Orthodox Christianity states that this is one of major reasons of why demons want to kill us through sins. They are already doomed, and they want to drag us to the eternal torment, as we are made in Lord's image. Talk about Evil Is Petty!

Stand Up Comedy

Denis Leary, in one of his '90s routines, had a bit (here, starting around 3:00) that could at best be described as "offensively sacrilegious". If the audience's net reaction is even somewhat positive, he adds a denouement, the implication that taking them with him will soften the sting a bit:

"—I'm goin' to Hell for that bit. And you're all comin' with me! 'We didn't laugh at that bit Jesus, pleeeaase!' 'Shut up! Get on the bus with Leary and Scorcese; you're goin' right to fuckin' Hell!' "

George Carlin: On wrathful gods: "If there is a God, IF there is... may he strike this audience dead. See? Nothing happened. Okay, if there is a God, may he strike ME dead. Still nothing." On terrorism: "I think just the concept that a man can blow up a bomb in a crowded market and kill a couple hundred people is exciting and stimulating and I see it as a form of entertainment. I have always been willing to put myself at great personal risk for the sake of entertainment. I'm also willing to put YOU at great personal risk for the same reason."

The prime culprit in the tabletop game itself is possibly the Eversor assassin, whose gene-boosted body explodes upon suffering sufficient physical trauma, usually taking with him whatever he was fighting at the time.

The Super-heavy units in the mass-combat expansion Apocalypse. They'll often take out entire squads if they explode, even if the squad(s) in question wasn't even in close combat with it. Titans have a special rule called "reactor meltdown" which causes them to explode with an even bigger blast that's also strength D (auto wound or penetrating hit on anything in range). An exploding Titan can take every unit on the board with it!

The Brass Scorpion, a Chaos superheavy walker gets +2 on the table that determines the size of the explosion as the daemon controlling it is driven to spill as much blood as possible, even in death.

There is also an ability for the Imperial Guard in the upcoming Apocalypse books called "Fire on my coordinates!" Any Imperial Guard soldier with a radio can roll for a leadership test. If he succeeds, an orbital bombardment is dropped right on top of his own position - assuredly killing himself (and his squad) along with any nearby enemies in the process. For the Imperial Guard - who are renowned for their ability to stoically take massive casualties - this is simply a badass way to go.

The larger ships in Battlefleet Gothic have a chance of opening a portal to hell when their reactors blow, sucking everything nearby in along with it.

A few Tau leaders are given a bomb that detonates if the Tau leader is removed as a casualty. This is viewed as "the greatest expression of the Greater Good one can make" as (depending on the edition) it allowed their squad to escape close combat (which Tau dread) or might tip the close combat their way (current 7th edition, 2016). The Tau otherwise have no suicide attackers and consider suicidal stands to be foolish, favoring feigned retreats and delaying tactics until they can amass massive fire superiority and punch through.

After losing one of his two hearts, Space Wolf character Lukas the Trickster had it replaced with a stasis bomb. If he's ever killed in combat, there's a chance his opponent will be trapped in a stasis field with him for eternity.

Tends to be averted by the Eldar, who see this tactic as an act of barbaric cowardice. They also dislike it because they're already on the verge of extinction themselves, even though they believe that their racial demise will awaken the death god Ynnead, who will destroy Chaos forever and play this trope straight.

The Grey Knight codex gives us the Brotherhood Champion, an exemplary swordsman of the Chapter capable of going toe to toe with the best fighters of chaos and standing a decent chance of winning. But even when killed, he draws upon all his psychic might and delivers a mutual deathstroke to his foe. this has a fifty fifty chance of succeeding, and it kills anything, even Eternal Warriors and Physical Gods.

Dungeons & Dragons has the staves of power, minor artifacts that are a great boon for any spellcaster wielding one of them. In dire straits, their wielder can also break the staff they have... resulting in a retributive strike, which does vast amounts of damage to almost anything capable of threatening them.

There's a possible side-effect of a retributive strike that subverts the trope: A 50% chance of the strike opening a rift and casting you into the astral plane...where a thousand years will pass with you only aging a single day.

The Draconians in the old Dragonlance setting were evil creatures magically created by evil clerics from the eggs of metallic (good) dragons to fight in the War of the Lance. When mortally wounded, depending on the type, they tended to go up in flames, emit poisonous gas, trap the killing weapon by turning to stone, explode, go berserk and then explode...

Lich is not killed permanently until someone destroyed its phylactery, which is supposed to explode immediately.

A campaign run by Shamus Young has a lich's phylactery cursed and trapped so while it might be possible to destroy it with ordinary means, it would kill everyone within a 100 mile radius.

When a balor dies, at least in 3.5, it explodes in a ball of fire that deals 100 points of damage.

Which was made even better because it happened instantaneously, as soon as they dropped to 'dead' (-10) hit points. So if you didn't kill the sucker from afar, you were face with a Total Party Kill anyway (if everybody's still clear of 100 HP after a fight with a Balor, you've probably passed the level at which Balors are meant to be sufficient challenges)

The balor is topped by the nuclear elemental from d20 Modern, which exploded for 400 points of untyped damage in a 400 feet radius, and 100 points of untyped damage to those farther than 400 feet away but within a one mile radius. (Reflex save for half). That, and it also makes a highly radioactive crater.

Barring special rules, the Reflex Save for half allows anyone with Evasion to dodge the blast entirely.

Forgotten Realms dragonmagic includes "death matrix". Needs to be cast only once, after this the dragon's body will explode upon death, unless disintegrated or something like. As an implanted magic ability, it can't be detected or dispelled like normal waiting enchantments.

Red Wizards' "spell lash". It's a spell that kills the caster and makes body explode. Invented during Red Wizards' independence war with Mulhorand theocracy (the experimental variant "mark of Gur", naturally, was castable on another guy).

Long before this was "blood dragon", a spell castable only by an elf (not even half-elf): caster cuts down him- or her- self, then the eponymous magical construct rises from the spilt blood and attacks the target. If it as much as touches, it dissolves the target's flesh. They were rather vengeful bunch, those elves.

3.5 edition Complete Scoundrel has "fatal flame" spell which, should its target die before it expires, explode the body in a fireball of power proportional to the target's level. Naturally, can be used on ally or foe alike.

In 4th Edition, there is the low-level Boneshard Skeleton that has an absolutely brutal blast for its level that goes off both when bloodied and when reduced to 0 hit points. Worse, if you have a group of them, it's possible that their blast can cause chain reactions with other Boneshard Skeletons caught in the area, with one blast triggering another.

In almost any edition, it's become a Running Gag for a person's dying words to be "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur". Canonically, Hastur will then pay a quick visit that results in a good-sized crater where the PC, their party, and whatever they were fighting used to be.

The Swedish RPG Chronopia allowed its mages to perform such a manoeuvre. By expending all their remaining Wisdom points (the mana of the game)(which is instant death by itself), they get to spend half their maximum Wisdom points as well, using it all to power a single spell without the usual skill penalties for using high level magic. While it's still possible to fumble the skill throw and not all spells are suitable for a suicide casting like this, a spell like Explosion is sure to cause some severe damage to the topography and anyone unlucky enough to be caught within the blast radius...

In Warhammer anyone who kills a Tomb King is attacked by voracious beetles. The Heart of Woe also explodes if the wearer is killed, causing a great deal of damage to anyone in range.

And Dwarfs have the option to put selfdestruct runes on their war machines.

An orc and goblins war machine specifically fires goblins at the enemy, goblins line up for the chance to go out in a blaze of glory as living ammunition. Night Gobbins too have their fanatics, almost certainly a death sentence but nothing is more inspiring and magnificent than a tiny goblin whirling a huge ball and chain around its head.

This would be the heart of woe - the orc's magic item section includes several items looted from other armies, though only one is called by its proper name.

More complex versions of the party game Mafia (as well as its variations, like Werewolf) will often include a "killing role" character, such as Hunter or Rambo. Rules for these characters vary, but their usual role is to take a set number of other players down with them when they're killed.

Dragon-Bloods in Exalted have access to a series of Charms with the Martyr keyword, which become significantly more terrifying when they're used by a dying man, many of which are combat effects. The most notorious is the Essence 7 elemental nuke called As In The Beginning, so a dying DB gets to take entire battlefields with him.

Paranoia encourages this, even above and beyond survival (because clones mean Death Is Cheap anyway): "What's more important— that you survive, or that your enemy gets his?"

Especially if you're on your last clone anyway, and thus (at least personally) have nothing left to lose: "Friend Computer, I wish to make a full confession. All the charges leveled against me are true. And all the other charges that Suck-R knows about and hasn't mentioned yet are true. And all the vidtape footage that Gone-R collected and hid in his locker is accurate..." Of course, there are no such charges and no such footage, but how would The Computer know that? If you're lucky and/or amuse the GM enough, It may even forgive or forget about you as It focuses on these other traitors.

Memetic Call of Cthulhu player character Old Man Henderson, upon finally being targeted personally by the Hastur cultists with a siege of zombies and shoggoths, holed up with his allies in a skating rink and rigged it with "enough explosives to make Michael Bay blush", thus taking the cultists, monsters, allies, and the Yellow King himself with him in a literal blaze of glory.

Theatre

Defied by the eponymous protagonist of Hamilton at the play's climax. In his final solo, seeing his friend-turned-rival Aaron Burr's gunshot coming towards him and knowing he is about to die, he deliberates over whether his final action should be to shoot his soon-to-be-murderer in retaliation. He chooses to spare his life.

In Heathers, Veronica is completely willing to die if it's going to prevent all of the students of Westerberg from being blown to smithereens by JD, but she's taking him down along with her.

"And there's your final bell!" "It's one more dance and then farewell!" "Cheek to cheek in hell with a dead girl walking!"

Jekyll & Hyde: During "Confrontation", Jekyll threatens Hyde with this and follows through at the end of the show.

Jekyll: If I die, you die too.

In Pokémon Live!, MechaMew2 tries to do this to Giovanni; sadly, the Rocket boss escapes before it blows up.

Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila ends the same way as the Biblical legend, with Samson bringing down the temple on himself and the entire Philistine cast.

Directly invoked by Enjolras and the other revolutionaries in Les Misérables; when they realize that no one is coming to help them and that they are going to die, they promise to "make them bleed while we can". Given how quickly they go down, they likely weren't too successful.

Theme Parks

In Transformers: The Ride, when Megatron is about to fall off a building to his doom, he pulls the riders down them with him, though Bumblebee saves them at the last second.

The final choice you make in Unlimited Blade Works route is as follows: After beating the Big Bad up, a sphere of nothingness begins to swallow him up. He throws out a chain and grabs Shirou; the choices are "try and break free" or "take him down with me". Picking the second one leads to a Bad End. This choice is so obviously dumb that once the Tiger Dojo starts up, it begins with Taiga beating a Super-Deformed Shirou. They then use it to hint towards a way to get the Good End of the route, due to them likely assuming that since the right decision is so obvious that the only reasons someone would do the wrong is is curiosity after beating the route.

Just before this moment, there's a subversion when Gilgamesh grabs Shirou with his chain. Shirou assumes that Gilgamesh is trying to pull this trope on him, but Gil is quick to tell him to stay right where he is so that he can pull himself out of the aforementioned sphere of nothingness.

Heavens Feel has one too in Shirou's fight with Saber Alter, if you don't bring Rider along. Shirou kills himself to stop her, to let Tohsaka proceed without interference. Taiga and Ilya in the Dojo are a bit troubled because they can't really call it a bad end due to beating Saber in a one on one fight, which is pretty damn badass.

And in the manual on The Dead Apostle Ancestors, El Nahat seems to have this as his shtick. Blowing himself up to kill an enemy. The Church has captured him and turned his stomach into a weapon.

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai! has Cookie, the robot, who gets ensnared in several ropes against class S in the Kawakami War. As a last ditch move, he releases his remaining energy to shock the students holding the ropes, then shuts down.

The Safe Ending in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors features Snake taking SIX bullets from Ace while the incinerator they are trapped in is about to burn them all to death. He STILL has enough strength to keep Ace inside while the others get away...

In one ending of War: 13th Day, the two surviving Valkyrie try to take down as many of the Vi before ultimately meeting their demise. Their deaths inspire the other clans to unite against the tyrants and overthrow them. However, this is revealed to be a false ending by your Unreliable Narrator.

Web Comics

Angel Moxie: In the final battle Yzin does this. (He fails. Sort of.) Both Yzin and Alex survive, Alex then pulls this too. Sort of.)

Played for laughs in Dubious Company. Tiren, the heroes' only fighter, is being beaten by Marty. Walter grabs him and jumps off the airship. Tiren and Sue both jump after their respective definitely not boyfriend. Tiren forgot Walter can fly, he grabs her. Sue's sister ends up saving the other two. The rest of the cast are stunned by the stupidity, except Sal.

A recurring theme for Ms Paint Adventures, as in Homestuckbeta-timeline Calliope dies destroying the Green Sun and the outer ring. At the same time Vrisca uses the Juju to fight Lord English. She may have survived, but if she didn't, she died fighting the way she always did.

"I don't give a fuck, I'm taking you with me! So you like to play with bombs, huh? Well, BOMBS AWAY YOU WOODY BUNNY FUCKING PECKER PIECE OF SHIT!"

Premier Jacade in Darwin's Soldiers: Card of Ten blows up Planet Gaman and everyone on it (including himself) to stop the rebels from taking power from him.

Melina Frost from Survival of the Fittest kills Beth Vanallen this way. After the latter stabbed another almost fatally and left her to die in quicksand, the former grabbed hold of her hair in her last act and dragged Beth under with her, killing them both.

Parodied in Kickassia, when The Nostalgia Critic makes clear early on that if the others try to overthrow him, he'll blow up Kickassia and everyone in it (including himself) with twenty tons of dynamite, then later on tries to do just that. Pity that The Cinema Snob disconnected the dynamite when he got exiled.

The character Riot Breaker in The Guildhall D&D podcast. Notably, he's used this strategy twice, somehow managing to survive both attempts. The first time was against a robotic dragon that, if not for his (attempted) Heroic Sacrifice would have killed the party almost definitely. The second time, a dawning realization of just how badly he'd messed up pushed him beyond the Despair Event Horizon, and as a result he intended to drag the villain into the murky depths with him.

In Worm, Armsmaster attempts this against the serial killer Mannequin, reasoning that while he doesn't deserve to live, Mannequin will kill hundreds more if he is allowed to escape. It doesn't take and Mannequin simply beats Armsmaster to within an inch of his life before leaving a mocking message.

Later, the supervillain Blasto is trapped in a sealed room with Bonesaw and Defiant. Bonesaw has modified herself so that if she dies, her body will release hundreds of deadly plagues. While the room is hermetically sealed and Defiant is armored, Blasto is not, but he resigns himself to his fate if it means that Bonesaw will die. it doesn't take and Blasto ends up as Bonesaw's slave.

In 22.4, Skitter does this to Tagg. It took this time. On Tagg, at least.

"I had only the chance to think of how they’d just signed Taggs death warrant, that my power would work while I was unconscious. I could have rescinded the order in the last moments. I didn’t."

Whateley Universe: This is the reason for the Star Stalker's creation, on a cosmic scale: if the invading Elder Gods couldn't be stopped, the Destroyer's mission was to destroy everything, in all dimensions, everywhere. Sara has refrained from explaining this to Billie for the sake of her sanity.

The Ruins Of An American Party System has a purely unintentional example. When Huey Long votes for the Civil Rights Act as a final political act before killing himself to avoid jail time for corruption, the shock causes his ideological rival Governor Eugene Talmadge to drop dead of a heart attack.

Western Animation

Used in the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers episode "Smuggler's Gauntlet." The antagonist of the episode stole some high-end Psycho Serum, and the Rangers are sent out to retrieve it. They break into the antagonist's hideout and are surrounded by mooks. Queue Zachary activating a neuron bomb capable of wiping out all life in a city block's radius and threatening to detonate it unless the antagonist backs down. Goose may have the Cowboy Cop reputation, but push Zach, and he proves to be crazier.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: "The Boiling Rock" has the warden telling the guards to cut the gondola our heroes are using to escape, with him still in it. Seems he's really that obsessed with keeping a no-escape record. (On top of that, what's below the gondola? Boiling water. The episode is named after The Alcatraz of the setting, and it got its name by being in the crater of a volcano, dormant but with magma near enough to the surface to make sure the water that surrounds the facility is boiling. Which means to be sure he gets the heroes, he is willing to suffer one of the most horrifically agonizing deaths imaginable.)

At least some of the Technical Pacifist Air Nomads fought back against the super-poweredfirebenders before the genocide was completed. Aang finds the skeleton of his mentor Gyatso next to a pile of enemy corpses.

The Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra had Lin Bei Fong attempt this in Turning The Tides, when she ordered Tenzin to go on without her as she attacked the airships, leaving her to go down with them. In a double subversion, she fails to take down the second one, although she manages to stop their pursuit of Tenzin and his family.

In the last episode of season 3, Ghazan chooses this over going back to prison - and collapses a cave on himself, Bolin and Mako. They make it out, he doesn't.

In "The Battle of Zaofu", Varrick of all people tries to do this to the people holding him captive. He manages to blow up the train, preventing Kuvira from getting the spirit vine technology, and only lives because Bolin saved them both.

In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Harlequinade" the Joker plots to level Gotham City with a nuclear bomb. When it's clear that his plan is going to fail due to Batman's interference, he aims the gun turret of the plane he planned to escape with on the bomb, vowing that, "That bomb's going to go off even if I go with it!" Fortunately, he doesn't succeed.

Captain Marcus tries to do this in episode 11 of Exo Squad, after his attempt to liberate Earth results in catastrophic defeat. Subverted in that he fails: the Resolute is destroyed before it can ram Phaeton's flagship.

In the straight-to-DVD Futurama movie Bender's Big Score, Lars, knowing that he's doomed to die eventually, presses Nudar and himself to the duplicate Bender, which was about to self-destruct. His video will reveals that he was actually a duplicate Fry, and wanted to die doing something useful (neatly wrapping up all the movie's loose ends) instead of causing Leela the pain of dying unexpectedly.

Demona and Macbath from Gargoyles had a curse placed on them that made them both immortal. The only way either one can die is through the use of this trope, i.e. one must kill the other, which will result in both of their deaths.

Justice League: In "Only A Dream", Copperhead tries to escape by jumping onto Hawkgirl's back and threatening to bite her with his poison fangs unless she gives him a ride. She simply flies a few hundred feet straight up and points out that if he bites her now, they'll both die.

ReBoot played with this trope and subverted it and eventually pretended it never happened. Big Bad Megabyte is trapped in a Room101 by Bob in an early episode (though Bob later becomes retconned into a Technical Pacifist), and so Megs uses the last of his strength to self destruct himself using a panel on his forearm that appears to be a Shout-Out to Predator. His chamber of doom is ejected into orbit to keep him from destroying everything. Even though Bob would never do something like this later in the series, and Megabyte turned a sickly black blotch as he prepared to kaboom, the chamber lands on the outskirts of Mainframe and we see Megabyte's fist punch through the chamber door in a Finger Twitching Revival (well, by his standards).

The supervirus Daemon has this as her entire purpose. She infects the entire Net and once her personal clock runs out she self-destructs and in sixty seconds everything infected by her gets destroyed as well.

In the Sealab 2021 episode "The Policy", Murphy pulled this off when Sparks tried electrocuting him for the insurance money: he got close enough to Sparks to electrocute him as well. There seems to be no hard feelings between the two, as they both sit in hell casually comparing punishments.

In Spider-Man: The Animated Series episode, "The Alien Costume, Part 3," Spider-Man tries to defeat Venom by luring him to the launch site of a NASA rocket. He intends to use the roar of the rocket to force the symbiote off Eddie Brock and then to web the symbiote to the rocket. The plan works perfectly, but Spidey was prepared to go this way if it didn't.

"Hope this launch doesn't fry my molecules, but if I'm gonna go, at least I'll take him with me."

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Rookies", a seriously injured rookie clone trooper sets off explosives that destroy himself, the battle droids cornering him and the installation they were on.

Steven Universe: In "Jail Break", Jasper tries to convince Lapis Lazuli to fuse with her to destroy the Crystal Gems by reminding her of the way they mistreated her. Lapis goes through with it and they form Malachite, but Lapis, fed up with being a prisoner (first in a mirror, then on Jasper and Peridot's ship), uses her powers to shackle them together and drag them both down to the bottom of the sea.

Lapis: I'm done being everyone's prisoner. Now you're MY prisoner. And I'm never letting you go! Let's stay on this miserable planet TOGETHER!

An episode of TaleSpin has Rebecca tell Baloo, "I'm going insane! And I'm taking you with me!".

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): The turtles' Triceraton ally Zog does this to the Shredder by keeping him immobile inside an exploding ship. While he succeeds in his intention of giving the turtles enough time to escape, the Shredder survives, while he himself...doesn't.

Villainous example: 2K3 Shredder in Turtles Forever made up his mind to end it this way by ending all of existence if only so he could destroy the TMNTs from Turtle Prime/the original Mirage comic.

In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) episode "Metalhead Rewired", Metalhead does this. After holding a portal open in order to allow all the mutants to escape (turtles included), Metalhead lets the Kraang all pile onto him, and then self-destructs by exploding.

Done interestingly in Transformers Armada. Megatron knows that if he and Optimus Prime both live, the war will restart and Unicron will be revived. He ends their final battle by allowing himself to be sucked into the space vortex, even shiving Optimus' hand when he tries to stop his fall.

He does it again at the end of the next season, Transformers Energon. The fledgeling new universe is powered by a 'sun' made of Super Energon and the head of Unicron. Unicron's spark has entered him, but when he realizes he's being used, he enters the Super Energon sun, apparently vaporizing himself, so that Unicron won't return; if Unicron really is alive, there'll be no escaping its gravity. Interestingly, Megatron returns for Transformers Cybertron, with spiffy new Unicron based armor but not that of Noble Demon-ness that makes him the kind of guy who'd sacrifice himself for the universe.

In Cybertron, Unicron does this in a way. The balance of good and evil is disrupted with Unicron gone, so a giant black hole that could consume The Multiverse has formed. If it's not stopped, Unicron will basically have taken all reality with him.

The two-part premiere of Transformers: Beast Wars had Megatron transforming to robot mode and risking fatal Energon exposure, in order to blow up Optimus Primal. Yeah, neither dies.

For if I must die, I shall take you with me.

Depth Charge goes out this way, taking Rampage with him by stabbing the crab with a spike of raw energon.

However, in the Grand Finale of Beast Machines, Optimus grabs Megatron and jumps into a device that turns all of Cybertron into a technorganic paradise, reviving all the sparks Megatron took. Both die, although Optimus's spark appears once to pass the torch to Cheetor before joining the Matrix.

In what seems to be a reoccurring trend, in the Grand Finale of Transformers Animated, Megatron once again attempts this with Optimus Prime, intending to vanquish his spark in the ensuing Starscream Supreme explosion. Notable in that Megatron did not fully acknowledge Optimus until this episode — it really goes to show how Optimus dug under him, and had the show continued, the event is what would fully kick start their legendary rivalry.

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